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Posted in Scout | no comments 
Derek
I’ve added 2 videos to the Scout homepage – they demonstrate 3 things:
- Installing the Scout client on a remote server is almost too fast
- One-click plugin configuration (I’m installing the Ruby on Rails Request Monitoring Plugin, so if you’re a Rails developer, there’s an added bonus)
- My awkward narration voice (I think my voice actually cracks on one of them…I assure you, I am not 13 years old).
If you’re looking for an easier way to monitor your servers and web apps, check out the videos. There’s a launch notification form on the Scout homepage as well – we’ll email people on this list before publically launching Scout.
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Andre
Much of what Rails provides to get your apps up and running isn’t optimized for performance. It’s crafted to be more efficient for developers, not more efficent at runtime. before_filter callbacks on your RESTful controllers to get the current object? That’s an extra database call. All those nifty plugins you are using to kickstart your app? They probably generate far more SQL (and slower SQL) than if you coded the same functionality ad-hoc. ActiveRecord itself is slow compared to raw SQL and object instantiation.
If your project grows huge—10’s of millions of PV/day huge—you’re gonna have to revisit some of that stuff. Some of it you can compensate for with smart caching techniques and more hardware. And some of it you will have to throw away and rewrite. If you get really huge, you’re going to have pay back some of the technical debt you incurred by choosing a tool like Rails.
Yes, using a tool like Rails incurs some debts. But just like the rest of the world, there are good debts and bad debts. If you’re smart about the kind of debt you take on, you can build far more, and build it faster.
Many of your projects will never reach the level where you need to “pay back” for all that developer productivity you enjoyed on the front end. That means you can try more ideas, and (hopefully) fail fast at the more speculative ones. If some of your projects do need to scale radically (beyond the basics of better caching, more hardware, etc), you have an incredible amount of upfront productivity you can leverage against that work of—say—optimizing some key queries by hand. As long as you go in with eyes wide open and realistic expectations, then I say that’s a smart kind of technical debt.
Posted in PlaceShout | no comments
Derek
One issue we face with PlaceShout, our short-form local reviews site, is that many of the shoutouts may not be relevant to you. If you haven’t been to Nihon in San Francisco, you can’t agree or disagree with Natasha’s shoutout: “Swanky whiskey bar/restaurant. Food was good-small plate Japanese and sushi”.
We recently implemented “Shoutouts You Might Be Interested” functionality to make it more relevant.
Nightly, we scan our database looking for places you’ve been. We find any shoutouts created at those places. These shoutouts are displayed on your personalized homepage, and you can quickly agree, disagree, or pass on each of the shoutouts. There’s a great chance you’ll have an opinion on these places since you’ve already voiced your thoughts on each of them in the past.
Once per week, we email 3 of these shoutouts to you. Directly from the email, you can agree, disagree, or pass:
So far, it’s been very successful. 38% of users have voted on a shoutout from an email. This increased the number of votes on shoutouts by 27% (real-time voting from Scout):
It’s had a great impact for 2 reasons—it keeps our users informed of activity at places they’ve been and it makes browsing and searching PlaceShout better. The most accurate (and least accurate) shoutouts now have significantly more votes.
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CBQ
When training, I hate using ‘foo’ and ‘bar’ in examples. It means I’m ignoring a major portion of my responsibility—relating the Rails concepts I’m teaching to the problem my students are trying to solve.
For example, let’s say you are training students that are building an application for managing project teams. When teaching RESTful webservices, try explaining how a resourcefully-built web application could provide a free API for retrieving information about the project team members. The team members could be displayed on a totally separate web application by simply exposing these teams of people as bona fide resources.
The example might not be completely relevant – they might not need to connect to other web applications. It might shine light on another problem they need to solve – can we do the same for sharing the project schedules?
In the end, it makes my students more productive. They focus on solving their biggest problems and not just learning all of the Rails concepts.
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Derek
In just 4 years, Detroit Tigers General Manager Dave Dombrowski turned one of the worst franchises in professional sports into one of the best. I thought this portion of a recent Detroit Free Press column really summed up why:
Early in Dave Dombrowski’s tenure as Tigers general manager, I asked him about the importance of having a clear plan, which I thought was lacking under the Randy Smith regime. His response was telling—more telling than I realized then. He shifted the conversation away from the word “plan.”
“It comes down to making good decisions,” he said.
1 comment
Derek
Last week, I had the single best neighborhood cafe experience of my life. Amazing service. Gorgeous interior. Spotless. Plenty of unhidden power outlets. A luxurious back patio. Reasonable prices.
Axis Cafe in the Potrero Hill neighborhood of San Francisco seemed too perfect. Like how an urban cafe might feel in an over-the-top daytime soap opera. Later, I found out that Axis Cafe was affiliated with re{NEW}, a ministry of Christian City Church San Francisco. 100% of the cafe’s profits support the Axis Community Project (ACP), which sponsors programs for the families of Potrero Hill.
My favorite high school teacher preached: “show, don’t tell.” Axis Cafe does a great job of this – I couldn’t find any mention of the relationship at the cafe and I was never approached about anything related to the church, but the entire experience reflects very well on the people in charge.
It’s similar to what Jackson Fish Market is doing with their suite of small web applications. Each of their applications is sponsored by a single brand, but the brand isn’t force-fed to you. It’s joining you on the experience. The well-executed web apps reflect highly on the brands that fund the web sites.
Advertisements on many popular web sites seem to shout “hey, look at me”. It’s to everyone’s advantage to see less invasive forms of advertising work.
BTW, If you are in Atlanta and looking for something similar, I’d suggest Octane. It’s a frequent work location for Charles.
Watch the video (1 min 39 sec)
